There is always a danger with taxpayer-funded welfare programs that recipients of government benefits may begin to see them as a normal way of life and lose motivation to seek work and support themselves.
So it made sense for the Chattanooga Housing Authority to encourage employment by giving housing priority to people who had jobs.
But it was deeply discouraging to learn recently that at least some people have been cynically manipulating that policy.
CHA officials don't have specific numbers, but they say that some people have gotten a job, used their working status to get into public housing ahead of others and then promptly quit their jobs.
"[W]hat we found was a lot of people would take advantage of jumping over people on the waiting list when there wasn't real intent to continue working," CHA Executive Director Betsy McCright told the Times Free Press.
Unfortunately, there was little CHA could do to combat that ruse.
"Unless they committed a crime or a fraud, we couldn't kick them out," said Eddie Holmes, board chairman of CHA. "We have people who have learned how to manipulate the system."
That is disheartening on two levels. First, it demonstrates a sad willingness on the part of some to use something close to outright deception to gain benefits funded by taxpayers. And second, it shows that some -- though of course not all -- of the people who receive government-funded benefits have little interest in supporting themselves even when they can find work.
The CHA is properly addressing the issue by requiring that before a person can get priority over other applicants for public housing, he has to have worked at a job at least a year prior to applying.
Still, we seem to be losing, as a society, the understanding that government assistance programs are meant to be a last resort.
They were never meant to supplant the dignity and independence that come from productive work.